Latin American Growth-Inequality Trade-Offs: The Impact of Insurgence and Independence

Jeffrey G. Williamson Harvard University

University of Wisconsin

December 11 2009 draft

Acknowledgements This paper relies heavily on three others: “Lost Decades: Lessons from Post-Independence Latin America,” Journal of Economic History (December 2007), written with R. Bates and J. Coatsworth; “Ancient Inequality,” Economic Journal (forthcoming 2010), written with B. Milanovic and P. H. Lindert; and “Five Centuries of Latin American Inequality,” Revista de Historia Económica (forthcoming 2010). I am grateful to Bob Bates, John Coatsworth, Peter Lindert and Branko Milanovic for allowing me to use our joint work here. I also acknowledge the many useful comments received when this paper was given at the ECLAC Seminar (Santiago, November 9, 2009), especially those of André Hofman.

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Abstract

Did independence push Latin America down a growth-inequality trade-off? During the late colonial decades, the region completed two centuries of growth unmatched anywhere and inequality reached spectacular heights. During the half century after insurgency and independence, inequality fell steeply and growth was so modest that the period is called the lost decades. With the appearance of the belle époque in the 1870s, growth rose to impressive levels, again even by world standards, and inequality surged to the highest levels ever, where they have remained for a century. This paper explores the connection. Key words: Growth, development, inequality, Latin America, history. Jeffrey G. Williamson 350 South Hamilton Street Apt. 1002 Madison, WI 53703 USA jwilliam@fas.harvard.edu

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Latin American Growth-Inequality Regimes since 1600

During the late colonial decades, Latin America completed two centuries of

growth unmatched anywhere in the world and inequality reached truly spectacular

heights. For the half century starting with insurgency and independence in the early

1800s, inequality fell steeply and growth was so modest that the period is called the lost

decades. With the appearance of the belle époque in the 1870s, growth rose to impressive

levels again even by world standards, and inequality surged to the highest levels ever,

where they have remained for a century. This paper explores the connection over these

three growth-inequality regimes.

Independence, Lost Decades and Tough Transitions

Africa and Latin America secured their independence from European colonial rule

a century and half apart: most of Latin America by 18201 and most of Africa by 1960.

Despite the distance in time and space, independence was followed in each case by a

half-century of political instability, violence and economic stagnation, or what might be

called lost decades. It did, however, produce a much more equal distribution of income

and wealth than before or after.

Imperial Rule: Economic Integration, Imperial Deterrents and Stability

Imperial rule brought entire regions around the globe into direct contact with the

rivalries between European states. Most colonies, however, did not become directly

involved in these conflicts. In Latin America, the Dutch invaded Brazil’s sugar-rich 1 Cuba and Puerto Rico are exceptions.

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northeast in the early-mid 17th century; Spain lost most of its Caribbean possessions in

the 17th century and fought to defend the rest for most of the 18th century; Spain and

Portuguese Brazil skirmished over territory that is now Uruguay. But for the most part,

the mainland colonies did not become the locus of disputes among European powers. The

imperial occupation of Africa also occurred with a relatively low level of conflict, despite

the belligerent nationalism that characterized the “great scramble” for Africa (Pakenham

1991; Abernethy 2000). Only during World War I did imperial nations fight on the

continent: African imperialists resolved their disputes usually through diplomacy.

Imperialism also brought a measure of economic integration. It fostered trade, if

only because groups of colonies shared a single master. Trade and factor mobility were

augmented within each of the imperial domains of Latin America due to common legal

systems, fiscal policies, currencies, and governing structures. Spanish restrictions on

inter-colonial trade in some products were imposed in the early 17th century, but ended

with the Bourbon reforms in the 18th century. French-speaking territories in Africa

formed a currency zone as did sterling for Britain’s African colonies. Central Africa

maintained a free trade zone; Southern Africa maintained a common tariff; and Britain

promoted economic integration for Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika in east Africa and

Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Central Africa.

The imperial powers also successfully repressed internal challenges to colonial

rule. In Latin America, potential threats came from ambitious European settlers,

enslaved Africans and their descendants, and burdened indigenous peasants. Colonial

governments produced few public goods, spent nothing on education and next to nothing

on infrastructure apart from fortresses and customs houses. Thus, settlers demanded more

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power, more public goods, more privileges, and lower taxes. Spain and Portugal had

virtually no police or professional military in their American colonies, but managed to

deter (and occasionally suppress) settler-led revolts by maintaining their capacity to

mobilize their vast imperial resources. This deterrent helped keep the settler elite in line,

but they also needed imperial protection from the slaves and indigenous peasants that

they exploited. Large-scale revolts by Indian and slave populations were rare, although

low-intensity resistance was endemic (Coatsworth 1988).

As was true of Latin America, European settlers in Africa adopted repressive

labor strategies, forcefully seized land, and drove the indigenous population into crowded

reserves. While the Crown had largely abandoned forced indigenous labor in Latin

America by the early 1600s (except in Peruvian mines), African and Latin American

natives were both forced into formal labor markets to earn cash with which to pay taxes.

All of this produced high levels of inequality in both colonial regions.

Insurrection and Imperial Collapse

The decline of imperialism in both Latin America and Africa was not driven by

some endogenous response to local forces but rather by exogenous events in Europe. In

the former case, it was the Napoleonic wars that eroded Iberian power, while in the latter

it was World War II.

The collapse of the imperial deterrent occurred gradually for Portuguese Brazil

and abruptly for the Spanish Americas. In Brazil, the Portuguese government fleeing

Napoleon’s army arrived in ships protected by the British fleet in 1807. Independence

occurred when the king reluctantly returned to Lisbon in 1821, leaving his son behind to

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declare Brazil an independent ‘empire.’ In the Spanish case, the imperial deterrent

collapsed abruptly when Napoleon suddenly turned on the Spanish government. In 1808,

he exiled Carlos IV and his eldest son (Fernando VII) to Provence and installed his

brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. By the time Fernando recovered his throne in 1813,

both Spain and its empire had changed forever. But for a brief time, it seemed like the

status quo ante would be restored: the Hidalgo revolt in Mexico was crushed in 1810;

dissident movements in the Andes were suppressed; and the Venezuelan rebels led by

Bolivar were defeated. But disaster struck with an army revolt in 1820. When the king

faltered, settler elites in the empire understood they could no longer rely on Spain to

protect them. Hidalgo had already proclaimed the end of the caste system and legal

equality of all Spanish subjects. Bolivar and San Martin offered freedom to slaves who

joined them.2 Indigenous populations had stopped paying the head tax (tributo), and

property-less urban workers demanded voting rights. With a weakened Spain turning

liberal, insurrection, independence and less unequal societies were just around the Latin

American corner.

As in Spanish America, most African anti-colonial movements suffered initial

defeat, but external shocks associated with World War II strengthened these movements

while weakening imperial power. The imperialists traded war services for pledges of

citizenship and equality. Financially exhausted by the costs of war, and embattled by

anti-imperial uprisings in other parts of the globe, they also reluctantly conceded power

to local politicians. In the French territories, African voters won the right to elect

2 A number of Latin American republics legislated compensation for slave emancipation after independence, but few owners were compensated since the funds to do so evaporated during the decades of civil wars and international conflicts during those lost decades. Thus, emancipation had a huge egalitarian impact.

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representatives to the Parliament in Paris. In English-speaking Africa, the British

appointed local politicians to legislative institutions; later, they filled these posts through

elections; and later still they modified the colonial governor’s Cabinet in the same

manner. Like Latin America 150 years earlier, a less unequal Africa was emerging with

independence.

Post-Colonial Violence

As the empires collapsed, so too did imperial defenses against external

intervention and the imperial deterrent to internal conflict. Latin America fell victim to

numerous foreign interventions. Spain made serious efforts to re-conquer its colonies

until well in to the 1830s. Britain, France, Spain, and other powers imposed blockades or

landed troops to secure economic and military advantages, or to defend their foreign

markets. Elite factions in many former colonies supported these interventions. Beginning

in the 1820s, the United States competed directly with the British in Mexico, the

Caribbean, Central America, and occasionally elsewhere, the two powers backing

opposing factions in local civil conflicts. Relative to the industrial core, Latin America

was a violent place between 1820 and 1870 where violent deaths averaged 1.2 per

thousand, or nearly four times that of western Europe (Bates et al. 2007, Table 1).

Foreign incursions also increased in post-independence Africa. While avoiding a

hot war on European soil, the Soviet Union and the United States were quite willing to

spar on African soil. The cold war spilled over into the Congo on several occasions, with

the USSR, China and Cuba supporting rebel movements and the United States and its

allies backing incumbent regimes. In the Horn of Africa, the United States and the USSR

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again backed opposing sides. So too in South Africa, where the United States long

condoned the Apartheid government’s occupation of Namibia, while the Soviets and

Cubans backed liberation movements there and in the Portuguese colonies of

Mozambique and Angola. The result was widespread destruction of property and

thousands killed.

The newly independent Latin American countries did not possess internationally

or even domestically recognized boundaries. Border wars, especially in Central America,

were provoked by efforts to reunify now-independent territories. The conflicts were very

costly and contributed to persistent fiscal crises: between 1822 and 1860, military

expenditures averaged about 77 percent of total budgets in Latin America.3 Conflicts over

borders were less prevalent in Africa, where wars against minority regimes were more

common. Between 1950 and 1973, violent deaths averaged 2.4 per thousand in Africa, or

more than six times the OECD. Note that post-colonial Africa was twice as violent as

post-colonial Latin America (2.4 versus 1.2 deaths per thousand). One wonders how

much of the difference was due to the larger European presence in Latin America and

how much to the relative efficiency of 20th century weaponry.

Violence, Political Volatility and Post-Colonial Lost Decades

In post-colonial Latin America and Africa, high levels of violence, political

instability, economic balkanization, and anti-trade policies all sabotaged economic

3 Government spending in Latin America was from 5 or 10 percent of GDP. Thus, military expenditures were from 3.8 to 7.7 percent of GDP.

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growth and reduced state capacities below the already low levels that had characterized

the colonial regimes.

Table 1 summarizes Latin American economic performance between 1820 and

1870, where it is compared with the European ‘core’ (what the table calls the OECD) and

with post-1950 Africa. Latin American per capita GDP growth rates were 0.07 percent

per annum, or, adjusting for the dubious quality of the data, about zero. This during a

period when per capita GDP was growing at 1 percent per annum in the industrializing

European core. The post-independence decades were clearly ones of dramatic falling

behind for Latin America, and the correlation between conflict, violence and instability,

on the one hand, and poor growth, on the other, was causal (Ponzio 2005). The African

per capita GDP growth rate was 0.89 percent per annum between 1950 and 1992, this

during an era when the European industrial core grew almost three times as fast. These

post-independence decades were ones of dramatic falling behind for Africa, and it

appears, once again, that conflict, violence and political instability were the root causes

(Easterly and Levine 1997; Collier et al. 1999; Artadi and Sala-i-Matin 2003). In short,

economic performance in the half-century after independence was abysmal in both Latin

America and Africa. Lost decades indeed.

Paul Collier and his collaborators offer insight into the impact of violence on

private capital in Africa (Collier et al. 2002). Conflict affected both the composition and

the quantity of capital. In the face of political instability, uncertainty over property rights

and potential violence, individuals tend to hold more mobile forms of capital, liquid

rather than fixed investments or land. And when fighting destroys old capital, investment

in new capital also declines. Both the reduction in the demand for local capital and the

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shift from fixed to liquid assets promoted capital flight. One estimate has it that 40

percent of private African wealth had been moved offshore by 1980, and that the threat of

violent conflict was among the most important determinants of capital flight (Collier et

al. 2002, p. 22).

Others have also found a direct relationship between civil war and poor economic

growth in Africa, the channel of influence running through capital formation (Gyimah-

Brempong and Corley 2005). The impact was very large relative to average growth rates,

something in excess of 4 percentage points. Collier and his colleagues calculated that the

long term effect amounted to a growth rate reduction of 2.1 percentage points over the

five years following a civil war (Collier et al. 1999). The Collier estimate is large enough

to account for a major portion of the lost decades gap between Africa’s GDP per capita

growth rate and that of other parts of the world.

At the end of the Cold War, Africa had about a quarter of the world’s nations,

about a tenth of the world’s population and about a twentieth of the world’s GDP. Yet, it

had about half of the world’s civil wars. Thus, Africa has supplied far more than its share

of violent political conflict. It is perhaps for this reason that Africa is rated the riskiest

continent for investors. One can only suppose that the same political instability and

violence explained the lack of foreign capital in post-independence Latin America even

after 1850 when the late 19th century global capital market really started its boom

(Obstfeld and Taylor 2004). While hard estimates of capital flight from post-colonial

Latin America are absent, it probably happened there too.

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Lost Decades, Balkanization and Anti-Market Policy

Political, fiscal, currency and market fragmentation created economic

balkanization in post-independence Latin America (Irigoin 2003; Prados 2006; Grafe and

Irigoin 2006). Balkanization probably had a smaller impact in Latin America than in

Africa since inter-colonial trade in the Americas was relatively modest, largely due to

imperial trade monopolies and high transport costs. Unfortunately, post-colonial

protectionism diminished any positive impact that could have been expected from the

removal of Iberian commercial monopolies. In 1820, the three biggest Latin American

economies had an average market size (GDP) only about one-fifth that of the average

European core country (Bates et al. 2007, Table 4). Combined, however, these three

would have formed a federation about 73 percent of the European core country average

size. In 1870, the average size of the four biggest Latin American economies was less

than a fifth of the average European core country, but the four combined would, once

again, have made a federation 73 percent of the European core country. The young

republics paid for their balkanization with small markets, small firm size, and

correspondingly low productivity. If scale economies and internal trade matter as much

as economists and historians think, post-colonial Latin America could have lost a lot from

this fragmentation and balkanization, especially after railroads became available in the

1830s to conquer the physical barriers to market integration.

Balkanization took place in post-independence Africa as well, and to an even

greater degree. By 1960, the French colonies had opted for self-government and

dismantled their respective federations. While they remained within a currency zone

managed by France, each could now impose tariffs, regulate trade, and manage transport

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services with an eye to their respective national jurisdictions rather than to international

markets. The achievement of independence by Zambia and Malawi marked the break-up

of the Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. The East African High Commission

also broke apart, as newly-independent Uganda and Tanzania each sought to promote the

growth of local industries, which tended to locate in Kenya. Throughout Africa, each

newly-independent country issued its own currency. Both English- and French-speaking

countries regulated labor and capital flows across its boundaries. In addition,

governments adopted policies that fragmented transport networks. The effect of

balkanization is clear in the data: the average African economy had a market size (GDP)

only one-tenth that of the average OECD country in both 1950 and 1992. To make

matters worse, most countries opted for import substituting industrial policies, seeking to

promote the formation of local manufacturing despite the small size of local markets,

much like the new Latin American republics did in the 19th century.

The aggressive anti-trade and anti-market policies in Latin America meant that

the continent failed to benefit from the boom in world trade between 1820 and 1870.4 So

too in Africa, where protected economies failed to exploit the world trade boom which

started after 1950. Like the new Latin American republics, post-colonial African

governments adopted a mix of anti-trade and anti-market policies, the most notable

features of which were: the movement to a closed economy; the regulation and promotion

of industry; and the widespread use of price controls (Ndulu and O’Connell 2007).

Prevailing economic doctrines, political commitments to socialism, and pressures for

4 By 1865, and with the exception of the United States, Latin America had the highest tariffs in the world (Coatsworth and Williamson 2004). High post-independence tariffs in Latin America can be explained by war revenue needs, redistribution goals, domestic industrial policy, as well as other forces (Williamson 2006, chp. 7; Williamson 2007).

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economic redistribution put a political premium on these interventionist policies. Indeed,

governments adopted such policies in 60 percent of the cases by the mid-1970s. Even

Africa’s coastal economies, which were spared civil war in the post-imperial period, were

subjected to these anti-trade and anti-market policies. This fact may help explain their

failure to emulate the growth performance of coastal economies in other parts of the

developing world in the late 20th century, especially those of Asia (Sachs 2001).

Table 2 offers some summary statistics confirming that both regions were highly

protectionist, anti-global, and had high tariffs (and export taxes). The average Latin

American tariff rate in 1870 was about 24 percent, more than four times that of the

European core.5 Furthermore, Latin America relied heavily on customs duties as a source

of revenue. The average share of customs duties in total revenues across eleven Latin

American republics was 57.8 percent between 1820 and 1890 (Bates et al. 2007, p. 14).

Customs revenues were even more important for federal governments (65.6 percent). In

the modern era, when non-tariff barriers are often much more effective in reducing trade,

the average African tariff rate was still almost 15 percent (1971-1991) vastly higher than

for free trade OECD. Post colonial Africa scored, and post-colonial Latin America would

have scored, extremely low on the Sachs-Warner openness index. In the case of Latin

America, these negative anti-global factors swamped the positive effects that should have

come from the dissolution of imperial trade monopolies.

5 An average tariff rate of 24 percent may seem modest, but it was consistent with much higher tariffs on import-competing goods, like manufactures.

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Lost Decades and the World Economic Environment

Table 3 reports impressive export growth rates in Latin America after the lost

decades, averaging a little more than 2 percent per annum from 1850 to 1912. The half

century before 1850 is quite a different story: except for Chile, the growth rates of

exports per capita were below 1 percent per annum, and in three cases they were below

0.4 percent per annum. The source of low and stable exports was certainly not faltering

world demand since during its lost decades Latin America shared in the spectacular

secular terms of trade boom which favored all commodity exporting periphery regions

(Williamson 2006, chp. 6). True, Latin America had a less dramatic terms of trade boom

than did the rest of the periphery, but over the four decades between 1820 and 1860 the

ratio of export to import prices in Latin America rose by more than 50 percent.

What about post-colonial Africa? While the mid-late 1980s were certainly bad

years for its commodity prices, Africa had twenty or even forty years (if we reach back to

1940) of strong markets for its exports (Deaton 1999). Clearly, explanations for Africa’s

and Latin America’s lost decades cannot lie with poor world market conditions.

The Drift to Liberalism

Post-colonial violence and economic decline in both Africa and Latin America

reduced state capacities and thus undermined economic strategies that required strong

national governments. Yet, Latin America’s civil wars and international conflicts also

undermined many burdensome (and inegalitarian) colonial institutions: caste systems,

slavery, state monopolies, trade regulations, heavily taxed urban consumption, state

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enforcement of the tithe, archaic property rights in land and restrictions on internal trade.6

The slave system had been undermined in Hispaniola and in those mainland colonies

where independence leaders offered freedom to slaves who joined them (Bolivar in

Venezuela and Columbia, San Martin in Argentina and Chile). Secularizing governments

stopped enforcing the tithe. Entail (mayorazgo) was abolished when republican

governments refused to recognize titles of nobility. Church property was disentailed, and

when the Church resisted (as in Mexico), its properties were expropriated and sold. The

hitherto inalienable lands assigned to indigenous villages and town councils (cabildos,

ayuntamientos) were sold and efforts were undertaken to privatize public lands through

auctions, grants, and colonization. Reforms of the property rights system culminated in

new civil and commercial codes after mid century. Fiscal necessity (to finance conflicts)

as much as ideology drove much of this activity, which was often accompanied by new

tariff codes, fiscal reform, and the reorganization of judicial systems.

The net effect of these institutional changes was to liberate economic activity

from a burdensome colonial legacy and to make for a much less unequal society: they

undermined state-sanctioned private privileges of the elite and dismantled colonial

monopolies. Thus, the Latin American republics drifted toward liberalism and less

inequality throughout the lost decades. Similarly, state-centered, anti-market strategies in

Africa were undermined and the liberalization of economic policies was set in motion.

Governments had over-valued their currencies, undermined export incentives and created

incentives for smuggling. Because total public revenues relied so heavily on import and

6 Customs houses along roads and at city gates were eliminated. Furthermore, restrictive regulations were abandoned, such as the rules mandating seizure of imported goods that deviated from specified routes into the interior and required a document called guias which had to be signed at each destination and returned to the port of entry. The elimination of these institutions was trade-creating, of course.

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export taxes, they declined. In addition, governments that had regulated industries and

imposed price controls created incentives for economic activity to shift to the informal

economy, where it remained untaxed. This policy induced fiscal crisis and contributed to

the collapse of political order. Furthermore, since governments had retained power by

targeting economic benefits to powerful constituencies, the decline in public revenues led

to a rise in political instability. When governments could not pay their military forces – or

paid them in worthless currencies -- soldiers began to pay themselves in kind by engaging

in extortion and looting, giving rise to even higher levels of economic insecurity.

Reform, Recovery and the Belle Époque

Nearly everything changed in Latin America after the 1860s. First, there came

political (and often military) victory of Liberal political forces that eliminated ethnic

discrimination by the state, abolished slavery, separated church and state, put an end to

archaic property rights in land, privatized public assets (especially land), abolished

internal customs, and eliminated public monopolies. Second, long term stability was

secured in most cases by means of historic compromises among competing economic

interests. Once conservatives accepted the new rules of the game, militarism and popular

mobilization were replaced by governing arrangements that provided major domestic and

foreign business groups secure access to influence. Third, the new political economy

came to be embodied in modern civil and commercial codes, judicial reform and

reorganization, new banking and insurance laws, renegotiation of domestic and external

debts, tariff protection for industries in the larger economies, increasing public

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investment in physical infrastructure and security. Fourth, stability facilitated economic

growth, which helped to cement the new political economy (Ponzio 2005). The GDP per

capita growth rate was 1.8 percent per annum for Latin America between 1870 and 1913,

one of the highest in the world (Maddison 2003, p. 142). Economic growth was sustained

by new investment, particularly foreign investment, which came first in response to

government guarantees and subsidies (railroads, public works, banking), and then to

exploit new opportunities in export production and industry.

These changes could not have been achieved in most Latin American countries

without the conflict and bloodshed of the lost decades. Civil wars destroyed many of the

colonial institutions that Liberals sought to abolish long before the fighting stopped. This

destructive phase of institutional modernization facilitated the transition to a second more

constructive phase in which governments discovered the institutional arrangements and

policies most likely to encourage investment and growth. However, the new regimes

succeeded in eliminating (or at least diminishing) the political participation of the rural

poor, and thus their relative economic position. They centralized power in provincial and

national capitals, away from villages and small towns, adding more to rural-urban income

gaps. They also installed, or enforced more rigorously, property and literacy limits on the

franchise. Political exclusion aided political stability and economic growth, but favored a

less egalitarian society. Still, most stable Latin American regimes of the late 19th century

lacked the capacity or the incentives to create institutions that could credibly guarantee

the property and civic rights of ordinary citizens or give priority to investments in human

capital. Thus, institutions favoring inclusive development did not develop in Latin

America after the lost decades were over.

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Latin America finally emerged from its post-independence lost decades into a

second half-century of impressive growth and political stability. But the social costs of

the policies that led to this Latin American outcome were high, generating benefits for

the few, more economic inequality, and political exclusion.

Next, we now turn to the evidence confirming this growth-inequality trade-off

over the three centuries between 1600 and 1929.

Inequality, Independence and the Belle Époque: Climbing Up the Trade-Off

Most analysts of the modern Latin American economy believe that Latin America

has always had very high levels of income and wealth inequality. They see today a more

unequal Latin America compared with Asia and the rich post-industrial nations (López

and Perry 2008) and then assume that this must always have been true. Indeed, Engerman

and Sokoloff (1997) have famously argued that high inequality appeared very early in the

post-conquest Americas, and that this fact supported rent-seeking and anti-growth

institutions which help explain the disappointing growth performance we observe there

even today. This conclusion is not supported by recent research. Latin America certainly

did reach very high levels of inequality at the end of the colonial era, but it was not any

higher than pre-industrial western Europe. Furthermore, inequality fell markedly during

the insurgency and lost decades after independence, so much so that it was quite a bit

lower than western Europe just prior to the Latin American belle époque. It only became

high thereafter.

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Latin America in Context: Pre-Industrial Inequality the World Round

Recently, Branko Milanovic, Peter Lindert and myself (2008; hereafter MLW)

collected what we call an ‘ancient inequality’ data base for 29 places, ranging over two

millennia from the Roman Empire in the year 14 to British India in 1947. The sample

includes four Latin American observations: Nueva España 1790, Chile 1865, Brazil 1872,

and Peru 1876, although a new Mexican 1844 observation for Querétaro can now be

added to the sample. While each of these 29 observations and that for Querétaro reports a

Gini coefficient and other measures of inequality, only Tuscany 1427 offers a full size

distribution of income. Instead, the observations have been constructed mainly from what

are called social tables, sources which report average income and income recipients by

social classes, but no income variance within them.

Social tables are particularly useful in evaluating ancient societies where classes

were clearly delineated, where the differences in mean incomes between them were

substantial, and where mobility between them was trivial. If class (and race) were the

primary determinants of income, and if income differences between classes were large

while income differences within classes were small (mainly reflecting life-cycle status

and luck), then most inequality would be explained by average income differences

between classes. Indeed, when income variance within class is also available for any pre-

industrial country offering social table estimates, the differences between measured

inequality are typically very small whether within class variance is included or excluded.

In short, the lion’s share of inequality in pre-industrial societies is and was accounted for

by between-class average income differences.

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Figure 1 reports what the ancient inequality data, where the Gini coefficients are

plotted against income (GDI) per capita. Figure 1 also displays what is called the

inequality possibility frontier (solid line), a curve based on the maximum inequality the

elite could have extracted at that income per capita. Now then: what explains the patterns

we observe there?

Elsewhere, empirical analysis of Figure 1 has confirmed the following (Milanovic

et al. 2008): The Kuznets hypothesis posits that inequality tends to follow a bell-shape as

average real income increases. Although Kuznets formulated his hypothesis explicitly

with a view toward industrializing and industrialized economies, his Curve is even more

apparent among these pre-industrial economies, and for good reason. After all, the

secular upswing in the Kuznets Curve could be easily explained by increases in per capita

income: poor countries do not have much surplus for the elite to extract, but as income

rises in pre-industrial economies, so does the surplus and potential inequality. In addition,

the more urbanized countries had higher inequality, consistent with the common finding

that inequality in urban areas tends to be higher than in rural areas (Ravallion et al. 2007).

Indeed, each percentage point increase in the urbanization rate is associated with an

increase in the Gini by 0.35 points. Colonies were clearly much more unequal: holding

everything else constant, non-colonies had a Gini almost 13 points lower than colonies:

the latter were ruled by foreign elites which were able and willing to achieve higher

extraction rates than weaker local elites; and countries with weak local elites but with

large surpluses attracted powerful colonizers to extract it (Acemoglu, Johnson and

Robinson 2001, 2002).

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Population density is negatively associated with inequality. The negative impact

of population density on inequality seems to be counter-intuitive. After all, conventional

theory would predict that more population pressure on the land should raise land yields

and land rents, lower labor’s marginal product and the wage, thus producing more

inequality, not less. Furthermore, this effect should have been all the more powerful in

pre-industrial societies where land and labor drove inequality not, as in modern societies,

human capital and financial wealth. It seems likely that this conventional effect is being

offset in the ancient economy data by two forces. First, densely populated agrarian

societies also had lower per capita income, so this may have been working against the

conventional force (since inequality rises with per capita income). Second, more densely

populated agrarian societies must have had higher relative food prices than thinly settled

or frontier societies, so that nominal subsistence had to be much higher to purchase the

more expensive foodstuffs, lowering measured inequality.7 It seems likely that this force

must have been most powerful during the two millennia before the middle of the 19th

century since a world market for grains did not yet exist and thus local conditions

dictated the relative price of food (Clingingsmith and Williamson 2008; Studer 2008).

This second offset has important implications for comparing inequality in the labor-

scarce and resource-abundant Americas with the labor-abundant and resource-scarce

Europe, and between the densely populated highlands in Mexico and the Andes relative

to resource-abundant Southern Cone.

7 Rarely do even modern inequality studies assess the impact of different class-specific cost-of-living trends on real inequality trends. We know this mattered hugely in early modern Europe (Hoffman et al. 2002), and we need to know whether it has also mattered at any time in Latin America since 1491. When Latin America underwent her commodity export boom during the belle époque, did the rise in food export prices in the Southern Cone serve to raise real inequality even more than nominal inequality? Did it have the opposite effect in Mexico, which imported cheap corn from the United States? And what about 20th century Latin American food exporters when their terms of trade collapsed 1915-1940?

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Has Latin America Always Been More Unequal?

Has Latin America always been more unequal than other parts of the world, as

implied by the work of Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff (1997)? Engerman and

Sokoloff offered a hypothesis to account for Latin American growth underachievement

during the two centuries following its independence. Their thesis begins with the

plausible assertion that high levels of income inequality, and thus of political power,

favor rich landlords and rent-seekers, and thus the development of institutions which are

compatible with rent-seeking but incompatible with economic growth. Their thesis argues

further that high levels of Latin American inequality have their roots in the natural

resource endowments present when Iberia conquered and colonized the region five

centuries ago. Exploitation of the native population and of imported African slaves, as

well as their subsequent dis-enfranchisement, reinforced the development of institutions

incompatible with growth. Engerman and Sokoloff had no difficulty collecting evidence

which confirmed high inequality, dis-enfranchisement and lack of suffrage in Latin

America compared with the United States. But what about comparisons with the rest of

the world? Oddly enough, neither the Engerman-Sokoloff team or its critics have

confronted the thesis with inequality evidence for the economic leaders in northwest

Europe at comparable pre-industrial stages.

Table 4 presents inequality information for pre-industrial northwest Europe (that

is, prior to about 1800) and for pre-industrial Latin America (that is, prior to about 1870).

For the former, we have observations from 1788 France, 1561 and 1732 Holland, and

1688, 1759 and 1801 England-Wales. For the latter, we have Mexico 1844, Chile 1861,

Brazil 1872, and Peru 1876. Engerman and Sokoloff coined their hypothesis in terms of

23

income inequality. According to that criterion, their thesis must be soundly rejected. That

is, the (population weighted) average Latin American Gini (45.9) was considerably lower

than that of northwest Europe (52.9), not higher. Furthermore, the comparative inequality

implications emerging for these social tables have been confirmed recently by Rafael

Dobado Gonzáles and Hector Garcia using an inequality proxy – Maddison’s real GDP

per capita relative to their unskilled grain wage: according to their data, Mexico, Bolivia

and Colombia all had less inequality in 1820 than did the Netherlands, the United

Kingdom and France, or even Portugal and Spain (Dobado Gonzáles and Garcia 2009:

Figure 18).

It is not true that pre-industrial Latin America was more unequal than pre-

industrial northwest Europe. Thus, if inequality encouraged rent-seeking and discouraged

growth in Latin America, it must have done it even more so in northwest Europe where

the industrial revolution first started! Since we know that high inequality was consistent

with industrial revolutions occurring in northwest Europe, it is unclear why it should be

inconsistent with them in Latin America somewhat later. Indeed, the qualitative evidence

reviewed above suggests that higher inequality was closely correlated with faster growth

in Latin America after 1600. What about the quantitative evidence?

Broad Sweep: Reconstructing Latin American Inequality Trends since 1600

Table 5 and Figure 2 use the MLW Gini regression discussed above to predict

Ginis for Latin America in 1600, 1700, 1790, 1820, 1870 and 1929. Table 5 also predicts

Ginis for Mexico in 1790, 1820, 1844 and 1870. Note also that the table reports

predictions for the five Latin American cases where we also have actual inequality

24

estimates: i.e. Nueva España 1790, Mexico 1844, Brazil 1872, Chile 1865 and Peru 1876.

While the correlation between actual and predicted inequality for those five cases is

hardly perfect, it is positive and significant (R2=0.42), a comforting result. Indeed, the

only big deviant of predicted from actual is 1861 Chile, where relatively high

urbanization and GDP per capita drive up the predicted Gini well above the actual.

Without the Chilean observation, R2=0.74.

Over the two centuries between 1600 and 1790, a number of fundamentals were at

work in Latin America which served to raise inequality. First, populations partially

recovered their 16th century losses, rising from 8.6 million in 1600 to 12.5 million in

1790. Thus, population density rose from about 0.78 to 1.14, and land-labor ratios fell by

about 31 percent. Second, GDP per capita rose from 438 to 650, or almost by half,

probably the fastest growing region over those two centuries. Urbanization rose from 9 to

14.2 percent, or by more than half, and to levels exceeding most of Europe. These forces

imply that the Gini might have risen from 36.2 to 57.6, which implies that over the three

centuries between 1600 and 1870 Latin American inequality reached its peak in the late

colonial decades just prior to independence (Table 5).

Independence, Lost Decades and Egalitarian Gains

While revolution, independence and the lost decades that followed up to about

1870 were very complicated times, and while there must have been many forces at work

influencing inequality, the MLW ancient inequality regression predicts that the Gini

probably dropped from 57.6 in 1790 to 46.4 in 1870, consistent with the qualitative

evidence cited in the first part of this paper. The biggest force contributing to this big fall

25

was, of course, independence and de-colonization since the lost decades between 1820

and 1870 yielded very little GDP per capita growth8 or urbanization. Mexico repeats the

Latin American (predicted) trends, its Gini falling even more steeply from 57.7 to 44

between 1790 and 1870, and, once again, by far the biggest fall being between 1790

(57.7) and 1820 (47.8). Ongoing research by Amilcar Challu confirms the big fall in

Mexican inequality: he estimates a Gini of 51.3 for 1844 Querétaro which implies that

most of the Mexican inequality fall between 1790 and 1870 had taken place by the 1840s.

Leticia Arroyo Abad (2008: Figure 1) confirms this sharp fall in inequality after

independence. She uses data on wage rates and land rents to infer trends in inequality.

When her rent-wage ratios for Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela are weighted by 1850

populations, the resulting Latin American rent-wage ratio falls by 11 percent between

1820 and 1850, and for Mexico alone the fall is 12 percent. Furthermore, the Arroyo

Abad Mexican rent-wage ratio trends and the Mexican Gini coefficients coming from

Table 5 are closely reproduced by the Amilcar Challu rent-wage series for central Mexico

1780-1869 reported in Table 6. Challu’s inequality index rises by 38 percent from the

1780s to the 1800s, falls by 29 percent from the 1800s to the 1820s, and then continues a

slow downward drift during the lost decades up to the 1860s.

Independence and the early republican governments brought greater equality to

Latin America.

8 Debate over Angus Maddison’s data is intense, but some adopt his more positive view of Latin American growth 1820-1870. However, even Leandro Prados de la Escosura’s more rosy view of post-independence is consistent with very poor growth performance (Prados 2009; 2007: Table 1.4): between 1820 and 1850, the two biggest republics, Brazil and Mexico, grew at 0 and 0.1 percent per annum, respectively; in the 1850s, the figures were -0.1 and -1.3. Lost decades indeed!

26

Creating Modern Inequality during the Belle Époque Boom

As “export-led economic growth took off throughout Latin America in the late

19th century, [income and wealth] inequality increased” (Coatsworth 2008: 567-8), and

we know the reasons why. Latin America faced a rising terms of trade throughout the late

19th century, as commodity prices boomed. Since it was a primary product exporter, land

and mineral rents were driven up relative to wages. This happened everywhere around the

poor periphery (Williamson 2002, 2008), but it was especially dramatic in Latin America

partly because the region was able to expand its export sectors so effectively, thus to

become very large shares in GDP (Williamson 2009: Table 4.1). Since land and mineral

resources were held by those at the top, inequality rose as well.

Not too long ago, the only data we had to judge the magnitude of these inequality

trends were proxies, like the land rent to unskilled wage ratio or the GDP per worker to

unskilled wage ratio (Williamson 1999, 2002). Thus, when the rent-wage ratios for

Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela (Arroyo Abad 2008: Figure 1) are weighted

by 1890 populations, the Latin American average rises by 37 percent between 1850 and

1900. This rent-wage proxy implies a very big inequality surge over the second half of

the century. We also have the more comprehensive belle époque inequality evidence for

the Southern Cone summarized in Table 7. It comes from two sources: first, Ginis

calculated from new evidence collected by Luis Bértola and his collaborators (2009:

Table 4), and second, what Leandro Prados de la Escosura (2007: Table 12.1) calls his

backward projected Pseudo-Ginis. They both tell the same tale: inequality rose by 11-37

percent over the belle époque. True, the Latin American weighted average reported in

Table 7 refers only to four republics in the Southern Cone – Argentina, Brazil, Chile and

27

Uruguay, an average that misses the heavily populated Mexican and Andean republics.

However, Prados de la Escosura also shows that a Mexican inequality proxy -- income

per worker relative to the unskilled wage ratio -- rose by about 2.8 times between the

early 1880s and 1920 (Prados de la Escosura 2007: Figure 12.1b), suggesting that over its

four Porfiriato pre-revolutionary decades Mexico followed the Southern Cone by

recording a steep rise in inequality. The Brazilian inequality index increased by 45

percent between the early 1880s and the mid 1920s (Prados de la Escosura 2007: Figure

12.1b). Furthermore, the Arroyo Abad rent-wage inequality proxy for Mexico confirms

the Prados data since the 1870-1900 increase was 27 percent over the three decades. It

follows that Latin American inequality probably rose by 30 percent or more over the

belle époque. Applying that increase to the 1870 Latin American Gini coefficient in

Table 5 would imply that it rose from 46.4 to 60.3, making the Gini in the 1920s the

highest that Latin America had recorded since 1492, even higher than the 1790 colonial

peak (57.6), and much, much higher than 1600 (36.2), or even 1700 (48.5).

A Latin American Growth-Inequality Trade-Off Revealed

Compared with the rest of the world, Latin America underwent fast economic

growth across the two colonial centuries up to insurrection in the early 1800s, very poor

economic growth over the five post-independence decades up to 1870, and fast economic

growth again during the belle époque up to the 1920s. Figure 2 traces out the region’s

inequality over the same three regimes reaching a high at the end of the first regime, a

low at the end of the second regime, and its highest at the end of the last regime.

28

Inequality and growth were positively correlated over the three centuries between 1600

and 1929. It also appears that the correlation may have been causal. Has this correlation

broken down since then?

29

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Table 1 Post-Independence GDP Per Capita Growth 1820-70 and 1820 Levels

Ratio Ratio Latin America Latin America Africa Africa 1820-1870 to OECD 1950-1992 to OECD

GDP per capita level (in 1990 US dollars) 751 0.44 1099 0.1

GDP per capita growth 0.07% 0.07 0.89% 0.31

Source: Bates et al. (2007, Table 3).

Table 2 Post-Independence Tariffs and Openness Average Tariff Average Tariff Sachs-Warner Rate 1870 Rate 1971-99 Openness Indicators (%) (%) 1963 1992 (1) Latin America 24.1 (2) Western Europe 5.7 Ratio (1)/(2) 4.23 (3) Africa 14.9 0.066 0.177 (4) Europe OECD 0.43 1 1 Ratio (3)/(4) 34.75 Ratio (4)/(3) 15.1 5.6 Source: Bates et al. 2007, Table 4).

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Table 3 Latin American Exports per capita, current US dollars 1800-1912 Growth Rate per annum (%) Country/Year 1800 1850 1912 1800-1850 1850-1912 Argentina 10.03 10.3 62.1 0.05 2.89 Brazil 4.78 5.0 14.2 0.09 1.69 Chile 1.63 7.8 44.7 3.18 2.86 Cuba 18.35 22.2 64.7 0.38 1.74 Mexico 2.11 3.2 10.7 0.84 1.97 Peru 2.31 3.7 9.4 0.95 1.52 Source: Bates et al. (2007, Table 6).

Table 4 Inequality in Pre-Industrial Latin America and Western Europe

Country

Year Source of

Population Actual Income Data (000) Gini Brazil 1872 occupational census 10,167 43.3 Chile 1861 occupational census 1,702 54.0 Mexico 1844 social tables 7,089 51.3 Peru 1856 social tables 2,469 35.5 Latin America 21,427 Unweighted average 46.0 Weighted average 45.9 England 1688 social tables 5,700 45.0 England 1759 social tables 6,463 45.9 England 1801 social tables 9,053 51.5 France 1788 social tables 27,970 55.9 Holland 1561 census dwelling rents 983 56.0 Holland 1732 census dwelling rents 2,023 61.1 Western Europe 52,192 Unweighted average 52.6 Weighted average 52.9 Source: Williamson (2010, Table 7).

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Table 5 Predicted and Actual Ginis 1491-1876 GDP Gini Coefficients per capita Actual Predicted (1990 US$) Latin America

1491 416 22.5 1492 416 35.1 1600 438 36.2 1700 530 48.5 1790 650 57.6 1820 691 47.0 1870 676 46.4

Mexico

1790 710 63.5 57.7 1820 759 47.8 1844 718 51.3 46.1 1870 674 44.0

Brazil 1872 721 43.3 48.9 Chile 1861 1083 54.0 72.3 Peru 1876 653 42.2 45.4 Source: Williamson (2010, Table 4).

Table 6. An Inequality Proxy for Central Mexico 1780-1869: Land Rents per Hectare Relative to City Unskilled Wages

Decade land rent/unskilled wage

1780-1789 62.0 1790-1799 72.5 1800-1809 100.0 1810-1819 80.0 1820-1829 71.0 1830-1839 77.2 1840-1849 78.7 1850-1859 60.8 1860-1869 52.6

Source: Williamson (2010, Table 5).

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Table 7 Latin American Inequality Trends 1870s-1920s Argentina Brazil Chile Uruguay Latin America Gini P-Gini Gini P-Gini Gini P-Gini Gini P-Gini Gini P-Gini 1870s 52.2 39.1 39.2 32.9 59.4 41.3 48.1 29.6 44.0 34.8 1920s 57.4 49.3 59.7 47.2 64.1 49.2 56.2 36.6 59.6 47.5 % change 10.0 26.1 52.3 43.5 7.9 19.1 16.8 23.6 35.5 36.5 Source: Williamson (2010, Table 6).

Figure 1 Ancient Inequality: Estimated Gini Coefficients, 14-1947

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

0 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100 2400

GDI per capita (in 1990 $PPP)

Gin

i ind

ex

Serbia 1455

China 1880

Naples 1811

England 1290

India 1750

Byzant 1000

Rome 14

Peru 1876Brazil 1872

Java 1880

India 1947Old Castille 1752

Siam 1929

England 1688

France 1788

Chile 1861

Netherlands. 1808

England 1759

Holland 1732

England 1801

Bihar 1807 Java 1924

Nueva España 1790

Holland 1561

Florence 1427

Japan 1886Levant 1596

Kenya 1914

Kenya 1927

Note: The solid line IPF is constructed on the assumption that subsistence=$PPP 300. See text. Source: Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson (2008: Figure 2).

38

Figure 2. Predicting Inequality in Latin America 1600-1929

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900

Gin

i Coe

ffici

ent